As is notoriously well known in the art, compact speaker assemblies are generally deficient in their ability to provide extended low frequency response at the power and low distortion levels required for high quality reproduction. In the past, this drawback has been remedied or limited by the use of elaborate enclosures, very heavy magnet structures and other well-known, but expensive, conventional techniques or simply by the use of a larger speaker assembly properly baffled. While the latter approach is effective in environments which can accommodate larger speaker enclosures, such as in a room where there is no objection to the size of the enclosure, the former approach has been only partially successful. Consider, for example, a listening environment which demands the use of small speaker assemblies; i.e., the interior of a vehicle. For practical installations, the size of the speaker assemblies which may be emplaced in a vehicle is decidedly limited and, as a result, the most widely used "large" speaker assembly employed in the rear decks of vehicles has been the 6".times.9" standard. Even the best of these speaker assemblies, usually mounted as infinite baffles, have not been able to deliver the magnificent bass avidly sought by audiophiles. Similarly, in other environments, such as a home, in which, for one reason or another, a large speaker enclosure cannot be accommodated or will not be tolerated, the same problem exists.
Thus, those skilled in the art will appreciate that it would be highly desirable to provide a speaker assembly which is compact and yet can deliver audiophile quality low frequency and full range reproduction at high intensity levels with low distortion, and it is to these ends that this invention is directed.